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Inflation in Zimbabwe surges to record 3,714 percent, the highest in the
world

ANGUS SHAW, Associated Press Writer

May 17, 2007
11:28 AM

HARARE, Zimbabwe (AP) - Zimbabwe's annual inflation rate surged
to an unprecedented 3,714 percent at the end of April, the official state
newspaper reported Thursday, as the government set up a commission to try to
bring prices down to single digit levels.

Prices more than doubled
last month as shown by a 100.7 percent increase - the highest on record - in
the consumer price index calculated by the state Central Statistical Office,
the Herald newspaper said. In the past year they increased
36-fold.

The Herald said that President Robert Mugabe on Monday signed
into law regulations to enforce wage and price controls through
''comprehensive price surveys and inspections,'' with a penalty of up to
five years in jail for violators. The ultimate aim would be to bring
inflation into single digits.

In recent years, the government has tried
to freeze prices for corn meal, bread, cooking oil, meat, school fees and
transport costs with little success. Socialist-style controls have driven a
thriving black market in scarce commodities.

Sugar, unavailable in
regular stores for weeks, fetches at least 10 times the government's
designated price at a dirty market in Harare's impoverished western township
of Mbare.

Minibus drivers, the country's main commuter transport,
routinely ignore government directives on fares, citing soaring black market
prices for gasoline. Commuters questioned at police roadblocks often lie
about the fare they paid or risk being thrown off the bus and left
stranded.

The independent Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries estimates
most factories across the country are running at around 30 percent capacity
or less, and countless businesses have shut down, fueling record
unemployment of about 80 percent.

Many consumer items have
disappeared altogether, forcing supermarkets to fill out their shelves with
empty packaging behind the few goods on display.

The worst economic
crisis since independence in 1980 is blamed on corruption, mismanagement and
the often-violent seizures of thousands of white-owned commercial farms
since 2000 that disrupted the agriculture-based economy.

Increases in
the price of fuel, transportation, vegetables and meat contributed to
April's surge in the consumer price index, which was double the increase in
March of 50.3 percent, the Central Statistical Office said, according to The
Herald.

The international benchmark for hyperinflation is a 50 percent
monthly increase.

The government warned Wednesday that the price of
bread is likely to rise because only a fraction of the normal wheat crop has
been planted.

In Zimbabwe's bizarre economic meltdown, a regular can of
locally made baked beans in a supermarket now costs three times the price of
the equivalent in Europe, compared at the official exchange rate of 15,000
Zimbabwean dollars to the U.S. dollar.

The Reserve Bank last year
introduced sweeping currency reforms knocking off the final three digits -
thus 250,000 Zimbabwean dollars became 250 Zimbabwean dollars - in a vain
attempt to tame inflation.

Even so, consumers are still forced to carry
around huge bricks of notes to pay for scarce supplies and basic
services.

For example, a pest control service on Wednesday charged 1
million Zimbabwean dollars to a homeowner whose house was plagued by rats
that are thriving as the country's sanitation and garbage collection
collapses.

Back to the dark ages

IT IS hard to imagine that things could get any worse
in Zimbabwe. But, sure enough, day by day, they do. Since the opposition, NGOs and church groups organised a protest rally that was
brutally crushed in March, the police and militias have been intimidating,
arresting and beating up political opponents, journalists, lawyers and ordinary
people alike. The government has even warned the Catholic bishops, once
considered inviolate, to shut up or suffer the same fate. Meanwhile the
inflation rate has passed 2,200%; last week the national power company announced
that it would ration electricity in cities, possibly to a meagre four hours a
day, just as the southern hemisphere's winter is starting to bite.

Power cuts are already frequent, but the latest
blackouts mark a new low. Residents of Harare, the capital, have been rushing to
get firewood and paraffin, though a domestic worker's monthly wage can buy only
five litres (1.3 American gallons) of paraffin or two litres of cooking oil.
Many companies, already operating at about 40% of capacity, say the cuts will
force them to reduce their working hours even more. “The whole thing is a
nightmare,” says Lovemore Mandebvu, who runs a small furniture-making factory in
Harare. “We don't know when we will have power and when it goes. This is
affecting our output. Then at home water runs out when you are bathing, and the
electricity goes while you are cooking.” Hospitals must use gas stoves,
coal-fired boilers, fuel generators, solar power and candles.

Basic staples like maize are becoming harder to buy.
The official rate for the Zimbabwe dollar is 250 to the American one, but the
street value is now closer to 32,000. Many Zimbabweans survive only thanks to
the 3m or so friends and relatives who have emigrated. Every day desperate
Zimbabweans cross the Limpopo river, braving crocodiles and occasionally
drowning, to try their luck in neighbouring South Africa. Trapped into
illegality there, many are exploited and abused.

Those who stay face the increasingly arbitrary power
of the police and militias. Since the crackdown in March, there have been raids
on Harare districts such as Highfield and Glenview, known opposition
strongholds, where random beatings and arrests have become common. President
Robert Mugabe's government claims that the opposition Movement for Democratic
Change (MDC) is responsible for the violence and is
behind a wave of bombings. The MDC says the bombs are
planted by the police to justify repression. Last week lawyers protested against
the arrest of two colleagues and the routine defiance of court orders by the
police. A march was dispersed and several lawyers assaulted.

The latest efforts of Zimbabwe's neighbours to
improve things are still going nowhere. After the violence in March, the
Southern African Development Community, a regional club of 14 countries,
mandated South Africa's president, Thabo Mbeki, to encourage negotiations
between Mr Mugabe and his opponents. But the International Crisis Group, a
Brussels-based think-tank, says that Zimbabwe's ruler has shown no willingness
to co-operate with the regional initiative to prepare the ground for
presidential and parliamentary elections due next year, when Mr Mugabe looks
likely to run again. At present, there is little chance the elections will be
fair.

But some of Zimbabwe's neighbours are sounding
exasperated. Last week the Pan-African Parliament, a talking-shop with a
secretariat in South Africa, said it would send a mission to investigate
human-rights abuses. Mozambique's energy company, a big supplier of Zimbabwe's
electricity, may switch off power unless it gets paid. And South Africa's
government, long in denial about the crisis on its doorstep, has just granted
political asylum to Roy Bennett, the MDC treasurer who
fled Zimbabwe to avoid another arrest. It turned down his application last year.

Still, this rare build-up of pressure was released
last week when, to the dismay of the United States, the European Union and many
others, Zimbabwe's minister of environment and tourism, Francis Nhema, was
elected to chair the UN Commission on Sustainable
Development, where he will preside over discussions on land and rural
development. Astonishingly, the UN's African members,
whose turn it was to hold the rotating post, could think of no better candidate
than one from a country whose agriculture has been largely destroyed by its
government's catastrophic policies. Like many other Zimbabwean bigwigs, Mr Nhema
himself pocketed a farm that was confiscated a few years ago—and has already let
it lapse into ruin.

Mugabenomics: Unprecedented Collapse and 3,700%
Inflation

Global Politician

Lawrence Ndlovu - 5/19/2007Zimbabwe's annual inflation
continued breaking new ground rising to 3,713.9 percent in April signaling
that the country's economic woes are far from over. Figures released by the
Central Statistical Office (CSO) Thursday showed that surged a record 1
513.7 percentage points from 2 200.2 percent in March to 3 713.9 percent,
the highest in the world, in a country where the majority lives below $1 a
day.

On a month on month basis CSO said that prices had prices had risen
by 100.7 percent last month after a 50.5 percent rise in March. It
attributed the rise to an increase in prices of domestic power, food, fuel
and commuter transport fares. The rise in prices would be a further blow to
Zimbabweans where four out of five people are out of work.

Analysts
predict that inflation would continue in its upward trend in the coming
months. Analysts say Zimbabwe still has to import grain after a successive
pathetic agricultural season since the takeover of land from commercial
farmers began in 2000.

Zimbabwe has only managed to produce 500 000
tonnes of maize against a requirement of 2.4 million tones, a sign that the
central bank will import grain.

In his monetary policy review
presentation in January, central bank Governor Gideon Gono said that
inflation would continue rising, but taper off to between 300-400 percent by
the end of the year.

In its World Economic Outlook for April 2007, the
International Monetary Fund said annual inflation was set to end the year at
2,879.5 percent, before hitting 6,470.8 percent in 2008.

The World
Bank described Zimbabwe's woes as unprecedented to a country that is not at
war.

Zimbabwe, whose economy contracted 4.4% last year, is its seventh
year of recession blamed on mismanagement by President Robert Mugabe's
government. The veteran leader denies the charge instead blaming the
recession of successive droughts and "illegal" sanction.

New pricing law futile as Zimbabwe inflation rises:
analysts

Yahoo News

by Fanuel Jongwe Thu May 17, 11:26 AM ET

HARARE (AFP) - A new
pricing law approved by Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe as inflation
exceeded 3,700 percent could worsen rather than relieve widespread shortages
and price rises, analysts warned Thursday.

The National Incomes and
Pricing Commission Act was signed into law on Monday as part of a clutch of
measures aimed to rein back galloping price rises which reached a new high
of 3,714 percent in April.It provides for the appointment of a commission
"to monitor price trends of goods and services, producing price monitoring
reports and initiating corrective measures in cases of unscrupulous
businesses affecting Zimbabwe's pricing system."

But analysts were
doubtful that the law would rein in the inflation spiral, warning instead
the new controls could worsen shortages of basic goods and spawn a
burgeoning black market.

"What we have noticed in the past is that if
controls are imposed, goods disappear from the formal market only to
reappear on the black market at more than double the official price," Best
Doroh, a financial analyst with leading finance group ZB Financial Holdings,
told AFP.

"The law is not addressing the issues. We need to make sure
industry is able to produce and bring the economy back on
track."

University of Zimbabwe economics professor Tony Hawkins said the
measure may only bring short-term relief to Zimbabweans sinking deeper into
poverty as inflation spiral shows no sign of relenting.

"The incomes
and pricing act will only have a short-term effect and I don't think it's
very different from all previous measures such as the price controls which
have failed," Hawkins said.

"Inflation may slow down for a few months but
it will bounce back. The new law is more (about) threats than anything
else."

Harare-based independent economist Thomas Mutswiti said
Zimbabweans should "brace ourselves for the worst."

The annual
inflation rate has been on a roller-coaster ride since December 2004 when it
shot up to 622.8 percent. In March this year it breached the 2,000 percent
mark to reach 2,200 percent.

Zimbabwe's Central Statistics Office
attributed the latest jump, reported Thursday, to the soaring cost of
domestic power, meat, vegetables, gas and other fuels, as well as passenger
transport.

The inflation rate translated into a 36-fold price increase in
the year since April 2006.

The state-run Herald newspaper hailed the
commission to be appointed by Mugabe under the new law as "an essential part
of the process to slow down inflation and eventually bring it down to single
digits while at the same time minimising its damage on the pocket of the
ordinary person by dealing with incomes as well as prices".

The
government in April last year unveiled an economic blueprint to try and
revive the country's moribund economy within nine months by, among others,
generating foreign currency, attracting more foreign tourism and improving
agricultural production.

The initiative has yielded little so
far.

In July last year, the central bank slashed three zeros from the
country's currency in another bid to curb inflation.

The southern
African country is in the seventh year of economic recession characterised
by high inflation, massive unemployment and chronic shortages of foreign
currency and basic goods like fuel and the staple cornmeal.

Central bank
chief Gideon Gono has described inflation, often referred to as "our number
one enemy" in official speeches, as "the economic HIV."

Zimbabwe cbank says food shortages stoke inflation

Reuters

Thu 17 May
2007, 13:45 GMT

By Nelson Banya

HARARE, May 17 (Reuters) -
Zimbabwe's inflation, which reached a new record high in April, has been
stoked by chronic food shortages caused by the country's controversial land
reforms, the head of the central bank said on Thursday.

Official
figures released on Thursday showed prices in the southern African country
jumped annually to a record 3,700 percent in a stark sign of the economic
turmoil blamed on government policies.

The cost of living doubled in
April -- touching a record 100.7 percent month-on-month from 50.5 percent in
March -- while the annualised figure climbed from 2,200 percent
previously.

The Central Statistical Office said prices of food -- which
makes up a third of the consumer basket used to calculate inflation --
domestic power, fuel and public transport fares had contributed to the
significant rise in price levels in April.

The inflation spiral is
the clearest sign of a deep economic crisis, blamed on President Robert
Mugabe's policies such as the seizure of white-owned farms to resettle
landless blacks.

"When
the governor urges a stop to the disruption of farming activity, he is told
to stop delving into areas that do not concern him, but I do not need to
lose sleep thinking about sourcing foreign currency to import food," Gono
said.

"I hardly have a good night's sleep, yet we've got the
land."

Zimbabwe's government has lined up more staple grain imports
following another poor farming season, and Gono said the food deficits would
continue to stoke inflation.

Apart from maize, Zimbabwe faces a huge
wheat deficit amid revelations this week by the agriculture ministry that
only a tenth of the targeted 76,000 hectares of land had been put under the
winter wheat crop.

The U.N World Food Programme had earlier stated that at least
1.4 million Zimbabweans would require food aid until this month, but
agencies expect the number to grow after a failed summer crop in the 2006/7
season.

Mugabe denies his land reforms have created an unprecedented
economic crisis and instead blames Western sanctions.

"Even with the
drought, why should we be importing food today when we've got the land and
have put in place drought mitigation measures?", asked Gono.

Minister Chinamasa urges Africa Commission to help shut down radio
stations

By Violet Gonda17 May 2007

At a summit in Ghana on
Thursday the Minister of Justice Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Patrick
Chinamasa, launched a blistering attack on radio stations broadcasting into
Zimbabwe and called on the African Commission to help close them down.
Speaking during a session on the status of human rights in Africa, the
government minister went on a propaganda campaign claiming media groups and
non-governmental organisations have a western agenda that is pushing for
regime change.

Chinamasa said there is a massive misinformation drive by
SW Radio Africa, Voice of America's Studio 7 and Voice of the People (VOP).
He then asked the Commission to put pressure on the countries hosting these
radio stations to shut them down.

Arnold Tsunga the Deputy Chairman
of VOP, said it was clear that the regime was trying to play psychological
games to try and win the sympathy of Africans but delegates were not fooled
but actually shocked. He said: "It is not surprising that a minister from
Zimbabwe can come before the African Commission and stupefy and make a
complete mess of himself in terms of attacking the rights to freedom of
expression in Zimbabwe which is enshrined in the African Charter of Human
and People's Rights."

Responding to this latest attack on the media our
station manager Gerry Jackson said: "Chinamasa has conveniently left out the
fact that radio stations are forced to broadcast from outside, because
independent radio is not allowed in Zimbabwe."

Armed para military
forcibly shut down Zimbabwe's first independent radio station Capital Radio,
started by Jackson in 2000. All the equipment was seized after just 6 days
of tests broadcasts. Despite broadcasting regulations brought in at the
time, that government claimed would allow for licences for private
broadcasters, there are still no independent stations in
Zimbabwe.

Abel Chikomo from the Media Monitoring Project of Zimbabwe
(MMPZ) said it was really worrying to see the Minister showing these strong
views during the plenary session.

In a wide ranging speech to the
Africa Commission, Chinamasa also admitted to the plenary that the police
did use violence against opposition officials on March 11 and added that the
authorities will continue to use 'appropriate force' to crush acts of
"terrorism." He claimed between 2000 and 2005 more than 650 NGOs were
created with a regime change agenda, and the government will make every
effort to fight the siege it is under.

Sources in Ghana said the
minister's statements were so threatening that the mood among Zimbabwean
delegates from civic society changed during the meeting. It was feared that
some of the civic groups were going to withdraw their names from the list of
speakers as a result of the threats. But Jacob Mafume the Chairperson of the
Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition said the NGO community and members of the civic
society were going to submit their presentation, which will show the true
extent of repression in Zimbabwe. The groups are also receiving a lot of
support from other human rights bodies in Africa.

Zimbabwe has seen
an escalation of violence against perceived opponents of the government in
recent weeks. Scores of opposition, civic activists, church leaders,
journalists, student and lawyers have been beaten and arrested. The orgy of
violence has resulted in 4 people killed since March, while 32 MDC members
have been in custody for almost two months.

Mafume said that the
government has shown no repentance and continues to brutalise innocent
people.

Jambanjas continue on farms despite sugar, wheat and maize shortages

By
Tererai Karimakwenda17 May, 2007

Instead of redeveloping agriculture
and assisting the remaining white commercial farmers producing food for the
nation, the government has continued with its policy of violent evictions
known as jambanjas. While food shortages intensify and experts say the
situation will worsen, a campaign of illegal and violent removal of white
farmers continues. The evictions, originally carried out by resettled
farmers and war veterans, are now under the control of the military. This
new strategy completely bypasses the rule of law. And former farm workers
now unemployed have become outcasts, working for bread and a cup of
tea.

John Worsley Worswick from Justice for Agriculture told us about 400
white farmers who remain in Zimbabwe. Of that number only about 250 are
still productive. Worswick explained that government enacted Amendment #17
to make sure evicted farmers could not legally challenge their removal. But
the farmers found a loophole which allowed them to get their day in court.
So the government resorted back to its original violent jambanja tactics.
Worswick said there is a farmer under siege in Chisipite just outside
Harare. And 2 farmers, 1 from Karoi and the other from Vic Falls, were
evicted last week.

Army officials and soldiers who are part of
Operation Maguta, the military management of farm activities, are now being
used to take over farms illegally. Worswick said the open display of arms is
a common feature. Farmers under siege become too scared to resist. The
whites are also seen as a threat by government because they witness what is
happening in the rural areas, and the many deaths from malnutrition.An
outcast society of unemployed farm workers has developed from the evictions.
According to Worswick, they are rewarded for any work they get from the new
black owners with some bread and a cup of tea. No money changes hands at the
end of the month. The lucky ones might receive a 10kg bag of maize as a
month's wages.

More student leaders abducted

By Lance Guma17 May
2007

Mugabe's security forces maintained a crackdown against student
activism in the country by abducting two more student leaders at the Bindura
University of Science Education (BUSE). Student Representative Council
president Tinashe Madamombe and Secretary General Moreblessing Mabhunu were
abducted by suspected state agents at the old site campus in the morning. A
statement from the Zimbabwe National Students Union (ZINASU) said the
abductors used a vehicle whose registration details they could not verify.
Coincidentally the two leaders were the subject of a ZINASU alert barely a
day ago, describing how they were being threatened with death for attending
a ZINASU general council meeting over the weekend.

Details of the
abduction remained sketchy late Thursday. The Vice President of the SRC
Chiedza Gadzirayi and other concerned students confronted university
security staff for an explanation on the abductions. The Chief Security
Officer there, identified as Muchena, suggested to the students that the two
had been taken to Bindura Central Police Station for questioning. University
authorities are said to be accusing the students of conniving with a
visiting student delegation from South Africa to organise a demonstration on
campus. Two other student leaders from the university of Zimbabwe, Prosper
Munatsi and Munyaradzi Chikorohondo were arrested last week Thursday
following clashes with riot police. One other student was expelled while 8
others suspended. All are candidates in ongoing student council
elections.

Meanwhile two leaders from the Zimbabwe Youth Movement, Collen
Chibango and Wellington Mahohoma, were released from custody Thursday
following their arrest on Tuesday. The two were arrested for allegedly
inciting 60-80 vendors to resist arrest after police tried to pick them up
for 'illegal' vending. The youths questioned the decision in light of the
harsh economic environment in the country and were arrested. They say they
were assaulted in custody.

One
candidate for MDC is an uphill task. Who will take it?

African Path

Trust Matsilele

May 17, 2007
09:33 AM

But a divided movement in which freedom fighters fight
amongst themselves cannot win over any substantial section of the
population. Only a united movement can successfully undertake the task of
uniting the country, this is an extract from the former South African
president Nelson Mandela's Reflections in Prison page 15.

When I read

this I said for sure this is the kind of struggle which
Zimbabweans should engage in, a struggle were all progressive forces set
aside their selfish agenda and put a cause for a liberated Zimbabwe ahead as
a way of ensuring that the present repressive and illegitimate government
leave office as of yesterday. This is a principle the Nelson Mandela's
generation incorporated and eventually made the apartheid regime history by
fighting arms akimbo with the association of Indian
Communities.

In September 2005, a squabble within the
vibrant opposition MDC left a loophole and a huge opportunity for ruling
ZANU PF to maximise its rigging and divide and rule tactics. Tensions became
rampant within opposition supporters as they were left in a dilemma of
choosing which faction to stand with and in the process the ZANU PF has
managed to rig the senates elections and all by-elections held under such
suspicions.

A lot of stories have been circulated to the
cause of the split though not the focus in this presentation. The MDC
Mutambara's Mkwananzi in less than a month addressing Zimbabweans in South
Africa said MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai asked the MDC leadership to go for
an in-house elections to determine whether to go for senates elections or
not and the vote would decide the course of action. When Tsvangirai who was
vying for a protest of the elections lost, took his jacket and left the
Harvest House (MDC offices in Harare).

On the other
side the Secretary General of the MDC Mutambara Welshman Ncube is alleged to
have been the man fighting against going for elections and on the last
minute Ncube said the party would go for elections, then divisions emerged
with others saying Ncube was bribed by the ZANU PF to go for elections
whilst some saying Tsvangirai's dictatorship had caused

these
divisions.

Now Zimbabweans are faced with another election
in less than 11 months. ZANU PF has already chose its candidate or imposed a
candidate upon in the name of Robert Mugabe now (83) who has ruled and
ruined the country in the past 27 years with many even wishing that things
would have been better if Ian Douglas Smith had continued as president as
problems persist. Reports of rigging are reported to have already started,
Zimonline published an article saying teachers were sent forms to fill their
political affiliation and to me it is a way of preparing for another massive
rig were all teachers who will fill ZANU PF as their party which highly
likely to happen as teachers in the past been attacked by National Youth
Militia and ZANU PF for allegedly supporting MDC

As I
write this article the government has withheld releasing of inflation
figures, pegged at 2200% by April 2007.Unemployment is above 80% and if one
loses the job chances of getting another job in Zimbabwe are zero. This has
made the public even more dependent on its repressive government which made
the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Union planned strike a huge
flop.

The MDC as agreed in the Save Zimbabwe campaign
banner are to chose a candidate in less than few months to fight it with
Mugabe. The veteran leader defeated Tsvangirai in the 2002's most disputed
elections, though the candidate has not been named it is alleged the MDC
Tsvangirai has already cleared the air by saying Morgan will be the
candidate. The MDC Mutambara wants conditions set which a candidate who will
only meet conditions fill the post.

This is an
election were the two MDC factions should unite. By the end of this week I
will be receiving feedback from the MDC Mutambara's faction from its South
African branch as to who they propose should be the candidate. Nqabitho Dube
the information officer has confirmed this development.

Tribalism is one of those key issues which is rocking the MDC supporters
since the split some have been made to hate Morgan more than the way they
hate Mugabe. The same applies to Ncube. The most surprising thing is that
Welshman Ncube's name has been spoken of a lot more than the way
Tsvangirai's name has been spoken about. This is one of the challenges
facing such a candidate in waiting to unite the party and defeat Mugabe next
year who has been

defeated before but won through his arch
rigging expert Tobaiwa Mudede, the Registrar General.

The two MDC factions have agreed that they will not go for elections next
year until a new democratic constitution is in place to ensure a level
ground. Two days ago one of the online news organisation quoted Emmerson
Mnangagwa as saying the MDC had been given three conditions to adhere to as
preconditions for talks by the South African president Thabo Mbeki who is
mediating the talks under SADC's commands during his temporary chairmanship
of the house of Assembly. The conditions are:

1) MDC
should acknowledge that Mugabe is the legitimate president of
Zimbabwe

2) MDC should acknowledge that Mugabe won the 2002
elections

3) MDC should denounce violence

And
Mugabe's condition is to bring sanity back in Zimbabwe in both economy and
politics. Efforts to get confirmation from Mbeki's office were
unfruitful.

If the conditions are to be taken as
serious, not as a mere ZANU PF propaganda message of pre-empting dialogue
impending, Mbeki's efforts are almost futile as the MDC can never deceive
its constituency which elected it in power by saying Mugabe won the 2002
elections were hundreds were abducted and some killed. Some of the cases are
still pending to date in the High Court hence accepting those conditions
will mean the appeals will be withdrawn and sanctions given to Mugabe for
cheating in elections will be null hence declaring Mugabe persona no
grata.

This is another litmus test for the MDC strength and
survival in Zimbabwean politics; challenges are in choosing one candidate,
uniting the votes, protesting elections if a new constitution is not in
place and last resisting Mugabe's bribery tactics-meaning eliminating all
opportunists who would want to sacrifice the cause of the struggle for their
individual constituencies.

Above all Mandela's message
remains that a divided movement in which freedom fighters fight amongst
themselves cannot win over any substantial section of the population. Only a
united movement can successfully undertake the task of uniting the
country.

Mbeki says Zimbabwe talks progressing well

SABC

May 17, 2007,
17:00

President Thabo Mbeki says meetings between him and Zimbabwe's
government and opposition parties are progressing well. Mbeki has been
mandated by the Southern African Development Community (SADC) to facilitate
talks between Zanu(PF) and the opposition Movement of Democratic Change
(MDC).

Mbeki says it is critical for the Zimbabwean government and
opposition parties to resolve problems. Speaking in the National Assembly,
he added that he could not give further details before reporting back to the
SADC.

Mbeki says South Africa will have to live with influx of
Zimbabweans into the country. He says the country is committed to helping
the rest of Africa resolve its problems. Mbeki says the resolution of
problems in Sudan's Darfur region will play a significant role in the
direction that the whole continent will take. He says many conflict areas
are looking to South Africa to help them.

Ending human rights
violationsMbeki has dismissed suggestions that the government is spending
money in conflict areas instead of at home. Human Rights Watch (HRW)
recently called on Mbeki to put human rights abuses at the centre of his
mediation efforts between Zimbabwe's Zanu(PF) and the MDC.

Georgette
Gagnon, the HRW spokesperson, says Mbeki has a chance to push for an end to
massive human rights violations that are fuelling Zimbabwe's crisis.
Gagnon's comments accompanied a report released by the HRW in Johannesburg
on the Zimbabwean government's ongoing crackdown on its political
opponents.

John Kufuor, the African Union chairperson and Ghanaian
president, also said the African leaders were concerned about the political
situation in Zimbabwe. Speaking before his meeting with Mbeki at the Union
Buildings recently, Kufuor said Zimbabwe was embarrassing the continent. He
said the beating of opposition members in Zimbabwe was worrying factor.

Learn to live with influx of Zim aliens: Mbeki

SABC

May 17, 2007,
20:15

President Thabo Mbeki says South Africans will have to learn to
live with the influx of illegal immigrants from Zimbabwe. Responding to
questions in the National Assembly today, he said it was not possible to
separate the two countries by a big wall.

Political analysts believe
some three million Zimbabweans may be in South Africa illegally after
fleeing an economic meltdown in that country. Referring to talks between the
Zimbabwe government and opposition parties, Mbeki said talks were
progressing well. He added that it would be improper to divulge details of
the engagement before speaking to Southern African Development Community
countries. The region mandated him in March to act as facilitator in talks
between Zanu-PF and the Movement for Democratic Change.

Mbeki says South
Africa is committed to helping the rest of Africa resolve its problems.
Mbeki says the resolution of problems in Sudan's Darfur region will play a
significant role in the direction the whole continent will take. He says
many conflict areas are looking to South Africa to help them. Mbeki has
dismissed suggestions that the government is spending money in conflict
areas instead of at home.

South
Africa deports 1,800 Zimbabweans

African Path

Ntandoyenkosi Ncube

May 17, 2007 11:18 AM

SOUTH Africa on Wednesday evening deported 1 800 illegal Zimbabweans by a
train, a senior official at Lindela repatriation centre in Krugersdorp
confirmed yesterday referring questions to department of Home Affairs Acting
Head of Communication, Jacky Mashapu.

The group was
deported for allegedly breaching immigration

law by entering South
Africa without visas and some did not have passports.

"Chief what are you saying about Zimbabweans. Yes we deported them yesterday
evening because our mandate is to deport all the illegal immigrants that
come here. We don't deport Zimbabweans only but all the nationalities who
are here illegally", Mashapu said.

International
Organisation for Migration (IOM) recently reported that more than 100 000
Zimbabweans were deported from South Africa last year and the rate of
deportation is rising sharply. More than 50 000 Zimbabweans were deported
between January and March this year alone, most between the ages of 18 and
24 years.

Nearly 800 children, aged between 11 and 17, were
returned to Zimbabwe in the same period. But the numbers deported are just a
fraction of the total number of Zimbabweans coming to South
Africa.

South Africa deports between 600 and 6 000
Zimbabweans every week from the Lindela repatriation centre, with the
country being the destination of choice for illegal Zimbabwean who number
over three million, according to unofficial estimates.

An immigration official at the repatriation centre said a group of 1800
illegal Zimbabweans was deported for allegedly breaching immigration law by
entering South Africa without visas and some did not have
passports.

"Yesterday evening we deported 1800 Zimbabweans
by train and we still having more 3000 Zimbabweans here (at Lindela) who are
still here awaiting deportation. These are people who have breached
immigration laws by entering South Africa without visas and some did not
have passports", an official said.

President Thabo
Mbeki's government has admitted that it was fighting a losing battle against
the influx of Zimbabweans fleeing poverty and repression in their homeland,
with many deportees returning within weeks.

Despite various reports that Zimbabwe's junior and
senior residents at state hospitals around the country have gone on strike,
demanding more pay and better working conditions, Amon Siveregi, a junior
resident at Parirenyatwa Hospital, said residents are still reporting to
work.

Siveregi, also a member of the Hospital Doctor's Association,
insisted that residents plan to stick to their plan to only go on strike at
the end of the month, if the government does not address their grievances.
But, the president of the Hospital Doctors Association, Kudakwashe
Nyamutukwa, told Studio 7 that some residents had already stopped going to
work.

Siveregi, however, said the ongoing strike by nurses and a few
doctors, has led to the deterioration of conditions and services at state
hospitals in Harare and Bulawayo.

Siveregi told reporter Carole
Gombakomba of VOA's Studio Seven for Zimbabwe, that resident sometimes don't
show up for work, not because they are striking, but because they cannot
afford the high transport costs.

Reporter Carole Gombakomba also spoke
with labor expert Mike Sambo, who said although the junior and senior
residents deny being on strike, the situation in some hospitals indicates
some form of job action by the healthcare staff.

Mugabe Benefits From MDC
Weaknesses

Institute for War and Peace Reporting

Tactical failings of Zimbabwean opposition have played into the
hands of the regime.

By Norman Chitapi in Harare (AR No. 112,
17-May-07)

While Zimbabwe's ruling ZANU-PF party is making it as hard as
possible for the main opposition Movement for Democratic Change, MDC, to
campaign, let alone win, the synchronised presidential and parliamentary
elections scheduled for next year, the MDC is just as complicit in its own
downfall, political analysts say.

Draconian laws, such as the Public
Order and Security Act, render it almost impossible for the MDC to address
its supporters; intelligence service-run electoral institutions, like the
Zimbabwe Electoral Commission, tilt the ballot in favour of the ruling
party; while the government's monopoly over the four radio stations and the
sole TV channel ensure opposition voices are rarely heard.

Since the
beginning of the year, the government has moved up a gear. It has become
blatant in its attacks on pro-democracy movements, which it accuses of
fostering what it calls "a regime change agenda" and stirring up civil
unrest in the country. Since the arrest and brutal attack on opposition
leaders and their supporters for trying to attend a banned rally on March
11, government pressure on the opposition has intensified.

Up to 600
MDC and civil society activists have been detained, assaulted and tortured
since the abortive rally, dubbed "Black Sunday". They include ordinary
people, journalists attempting to cover opposition activities and lawyers
trying to secure their release. Police have routinely ignored court orders
to allow those beaten access either to their lawyers or medical
treatment.

"It is a state gone berserk. It is the ultimate break down
of law and order," lamented a political analyst in Harare.

This
followed the arrest and beating up of four senior Harare lawyers on May 9
for demonstrating against the detention by police of two of their colleagues
who were seeking bail for detained opposition activists.

Southern African
Development Community Lawyers' Association president Sternford Moyo, a
veteran lawyer in Harare, said they would challenge the deliberate
subversion of the law by the state. He deplored the attack on lawyers going
about their duty to ensure every Zimbabwean had access to legal
counsel.

Analysts, however, said these attacks could not go on forever,
noting that violence of this kind had a limited impact. The analysts said
there was enough resentment in the country against the ruling party over the
collapsing economy, which the opposition could easily tap into if it was
organised and able to change its strategies.

"Therein lies the
biggest problem for the MDC," said another analyst in Harare. "Instead of
organising its local structures, even without holding rallies (they are
banned), the MDC is more visible when complaining against police brutality
or in its messages delivered to foreign audiences."

The analyst said the
MDC leadership put too much faith in the influence of the international
community instead of local voters. "We all know [President Robert] Mugabe
doesn't care what the West says. After all, he believes they want him out of
power. But more than that, the MDC is addressing the wrong audience. Who
reads the Washington Post or the South African Sunday Times?" he asked,
referring to foreign newspapers that carried recent speeches by MDC leader
Morgan Tsvangirai.

He said the MDC was failing to set up strong
structures in rural areas to challenge ZANU-PF. Referring to the MDC 's
performance in its first parliamentary election in July 2000, the analyst
said the party had won several seats in rural areas despite the worst
electoral violence ever witnessed in the country.

He also said the
MDC apparently didn't have a coherent programme for rural areas. He said
this made it hard for it to penetrate countryside communities, which have
received land free from the ruling party. He said the MDC was also failing
to counter claims by new ZANU-PF landlords that it planned to return land to
white commercial farmers.

"While ZANU-PF is able to talk about the land,"
said the analyst, "the best the MDC can talk about are human rights and
democracy. While all this is valid, it is a hard sell to ordinary people.
They want seed, fertiliser, draught power and transport."

Another
analyst said the MDC was also losing support in urban communities because of
its "negativity". He said the party was focused on negative factors without
offering a better vision and purpose to restore people's hopes.

"It
is well to expose ZANU-PF's incompetence and corruption," he said. "But
surely they must show us the way forward. There is too much negativity in
their politics.

"When they tell their supporters that elections under
the current constitution produce 'predetermined outcomes', this breeds
apathy among voters. Why should people vote when you already know the
result? It becomes very difficult to gauge their level of support and how
far the outcome is a result of rigging."

Along with inducing voter
apathy, the analyst said the MDC wasted too much time deciding whether to
participate in elections, "This shows bad leadership. Indecision is a
definite no-no in leadership. People don't owe any politician a living and
want to vote and get on with their lives."

But when leaders threaten to
boycott elections one day and the following day turn around to say to people
"go and vote for us", they are not doing their party any good service. This
has worked badly for the MDC in the past and ZANU-PF has probably won by
default.

People are looking for new and positive strategies to beat
ZANU-PF and those can only come from leaders - leadership cannot be
subcontracted to the moral influence of foreign governments, he
said.

THE City
of Harare and the controversy-ridden Zimbabwe National Water Authority
(ZINWA) have both come up with controversial systems of looting resources
from the already burdened residents in the low-density suburbs by making
them pay for services they do not use.

Residents of Newlands have been
furious for the past fortnight with the City of Harare after it asked them
to pay for sewerage connections yet the majority of them have not connected
to the main sewer system. They still use their septic tanks which are
emptied once they fill up.

Their main concern is that they are being
asked to fund a non-existent service, which they are not receiving. ZINWA
has notified them that they will be billed for sewerage charges in spite of
their septic tanks.

At the same time more residents are seriously worried
that the City of Harare is going to bill them $400 000 each for new lidded
bins. This information is contained in notices on April rates bills send out
to residents in the low density suburbs. It indicates that residents will be
billed the full cost of the new lidded plastic bins. It is suspected that
the deal is benefiting someone in the City administration since the matter
was never put to public tender, as far as residents are
concerned.

Thereafter the bins will be ready for collection from district
offices.

CHRA is worried and is investigating how this came into being
and who authorized this mandatory way of ripping ratepayers' money. The
public has never been consulted on this and the Associated urges the City of
Harare to make public its position regarding this clear attempt to rob the
public of their hard-earned cash. Those mostly concerned are the pensioners
who have no source of money to pay for additional charges.

"CHRA for
Enhanced Civic Participation in Local
Governance"

Ends________________________________________________________________________For
further details please contact us on info@chra.co.zw, and on mobile 0912 924
151, 011 862 012, 011 443 578 and 011 612 860 or visit us at Exploration
House, Third Floor, Corner Robert Mugabe Way and Fifth Street.

Gono rejects calls to quit

New Zimbabwe

By Lebo NkatazoLast
updated: 05/18/2007 03:47:32RESERVE Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) chief Gideon Gono
said Thursday he was under pressure to quit, and conceded that the printing
of trillions of dollars has not helped to turn around the
economy.

Gono, talking to MPs, also hit out at his critics in parliament
and the ruling Zanu PF party who opposed his economic revival strategy,
saying they were misguided.

He singled out those who were calling for
the establishment of a foreign currency allocation committee for most
criticism.

The Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Budget and Finance
headed by Guruve North MP David Butau (Zanu PF) opposed the managing of
forex by one man and said Gono must also account for the RBZ's quasi- fiscal
activities in a report presented to parliament this week.

The Zanu PF
economic committee tabled similar recommendations at the party's conference
in December last year.

Gono appeared before the Budget and Finance
Committee on Thursday to face his critics.

"They say the governor is
big-headed, he has got ambition. Some hide behind the camouflage of the
legislature and bring out their spears so that the governor can be moved.
Not before my term is finished!" Gono thundered.

"We offer no apologies
for interfering in all spheres of the economy. We offer no apology for doing
the unorthodox. Those who wrote economic textbooks never experienced
Zimbabwe's land reform."

The governor said for as long as parastatals,
local authorities and other government departments went to the RBZ to beg
for money, he would have an interest on how the money is spent.

"I
hardly have a good sleep at night. I sleep facing the stars.why should we be
importing food when the RBZ has printed trillions and trillions? We are
being told that we cannot produce because we are susceptible to drought,"
Gono said.

Gono also rejected the formation of foreign exchange
allocation committees to manage the scarce foreign currency in the country,
calling such a recommendation "illogical".

He said: "It is therefore,
illogical and misguided for some sections of society to recommend to
government the formation of foreign exchange allocation committees thinking
that this would in itself solve the prevailing foreign currency
shortages."

Zimbabwe is going through its worst economic recession in
history, with record inflation of 3714 percent and massive
unemployment.

President Robert Mugabe and the Reserve Bank blame the
decline on sanctions imposed by Western countries, but his critics point to
the botched land reform exercise which saw bands of Mugabe's loyalists march
on commercial farmland, driving out white farmers and disrupting
agriculture.

"Women Politicians Only Serving The Men"

IPS

Tonderai
Kwidini

HARARE, May 17 (IPS) - ''In terms of the number of women in
government, yes, we are making progress. But if you dig deep about why these
women were appointed you will find that they are only important when it is
voting time,'' says Zhean Gwaze, a gender activist and
journalist.

She contends that women in government are simply there to
serve the interests of male politicians. Human rights activist Alice Chibwe
agrees: ''We have a female vice-president but what matters is the job that
she is doing. She is not doing any qualitative work to further the interests
of women.

''This is one of the reasons why the realization of gender
equality by 2015 becomes a big joke," says Chibwe, who works for the
Southern African Human Rights Trust (SAHRIT), a non-governmental
organization with a special interest in human rights work. The United
Nations' Millennium Development Goals set 2015 as the target year for the
advancement of gender equality.

In Zimbabwe, gender disparities
characterize all aspects of development. The country is ranked 109th in the
global gender-related development index. This reflects the generally low
status of women with respect to access, control and ownership of economic
resources and positions in decision-making processes.

Gwaze says
Zimbabwe has ''a long way to go before achieving gender equality. In terms
of politics, we have not even reached the 30 percent quota system in
parliament. The proposed 50-50 percent parliamentary representation by 2008
is unattainable''. In the 150-member parliament only 23 parliamentarians are
female.

According to Chibwe, the country ''has made some strides in
adopting policies and a legal framework that promotes gender equality but
the socio-economic situation in the country impedes progress''.

In
2004, the government adopted the National Gender Policy (NGP). The policy
seeks to promote the integration of gender perspectives into the design,
implementation, monitoring and evaluation of policies and programmes. The
policy was developed with the assistance of the United Nations Development
Programme (UNDP).

As part of the NGP, President Robert Mugabe this
year promulgated the Domestic Violence Law. It was drafted by the
government, NGOs, the UNDP, female politicians and women's organizations.
The law seeks to provide protection and relief to victims of domestic
violence.

Levels of domestic violence in Zimbabwe are alarmingly high.
Police records of 2006 show that one in every four women suffers abuse
during her lifetime. Almost 60 percent of murder cases going through the
High Court are related to domestic violence.

The UNDP is this year
supporting the development of the Zimbabwe National Human Development
Report. The report will be focusing on gender and development to give a
precise account of those aspects which stifle the full participation of
women in decision-making.

The UNDP is also actively assisting with
women's participation in national budgetary processes in Zimbabwe. It wants
to link governance and poverty reduction to the participation of women in
decision-making processes. As a result of this move, the government in April
this year launched the Gender, Budgeting and Women's Empowerment
Programme.

Gwaze feels strongly that the adoption of the latest gender
programme is a way for the government to buy time in the current political
crisis gripping the country.

The enactment of these policies aimed at
eradicating discrimination against women is yet to be seen in practical
terms. ''I feel men still have more advantages than women,'' states Clotilda
Chidawanyika, the founder and managing director of Transafrik, a Zimbabwean
money transfer company.

''Yes, the government is doing something but it
can do better. For a woman to be successful, she has to put in twice the
effort and go an extra mile in order to be recognized. There are more
chances in life for men than there are for women. I think 2015 is too early
for Zimbabwe, unless there is a radical change in policies and
politics.''

The Zimbabwe Stock Exchange (ZSE) still has a male face.
Investing and dealing in stocks has largely remained a male domain and only
a small number of women deal on the ZSE. Of the 35 stockbrokers involved in
the day-to-day trading on the local bourse, only four are women and three of
these are not yet registered brokers.

But while many people in
Zimbabwe complain about society's token approach to gender equality, Chipo
Mtasa, the managing director of a leading Zimbabwean leisure company, begs
to differ. ''It was initially not easy for me to be so visible, but I made a
strong effort to establish good contacts from the very beginning.

''I
never found it a challenge being a woman in business and I never felt
marginalized. For me, the playing field has been even,'' says
Mtasa.

Women are not alone in the fight for gender equality.
Padare/Enkundleni Men's Forum is a male anti-sexist organization dedicated
to fighting gender inequality.

''We are working to develop a
men-based social movement that contributes to the elimination of
discrimination against women. We will do this through the promotion and
facilitation of ideas and actions that enable the participation of men in
the struggle for a gender-just society,'' says the organization's advocacy
officer, Eddington Mhonda.

The law enables Zimbabwe to fulfil its
international obligations as required by the various international human
rights instruments, including the UN's Convention on the Elimination of all
forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW).

Zimbabwe is also a
signatory to the Southern African Development Community (SADC) Declaration
on Gender and Development of 1997. Under the declaration countries committed
themselves to the achievement of a target of at least 30 percent women in
political and decision-making structures by 2005 and the promotion of
women's access to resources.

Harare Under Fire At African Human Rights Commission
Session

VOA

By Blessing ZuluWashington16 May
2007

Non-governmental organizations from African countries
resolved to place Zimbabwe's alleged human rights violations high on the
agenda of an African Commission on Human and People's Rights session that
opened Wednesday in Accra, Ghana.

Their resolution called on Harare
to stop "harassing, intimidating, assaulting, arresting and detaining human
rights defenders, including members of the legal profession."

The
NGOs urged Harare to repeal repressive laws such as the Access to
Information and Protection of Privacy Act, also known as AIPPA, the Public
Order and Security Act, or POSA,, and the Broadcasting Services Act, among
others.

Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa, representing Zimbabwe,
was expected to present shortly a report defending the government. Sources
said the report denies allegations of human rights abuses, and blames the
country's economic crisis on Western sanctions.

"The undeclared and
declared sanctions imposed on Zimbabwe, investor flight, shortage of basic
commodities, a range of externally generated inflationary pressures and
sustained diplomatic isolation orchestrated by Britain and its allies
against Zimbabwe are negatively impacting on Zimbabwe's security, political
and economic well being, hence the quality of life and the fundamental
rights of its people," the Zimbabwe government report said.

Harare also
accuses Britain of funding the opposition Movement for Democratic Change in
hopes it will reverse the land reform program if it gains
power.

Britain has refuted this charge, as well as Harare's contention
that sanctions are the cause of Zimbabwe's economic woes. Western sanctions
against targeted specific government and party officials, including
President Robert Mugabe.

The legal advisor for the Zimbabwe Chapter
of the Media Institute of Southern Africa, Wilbert Mandinde, representing
NGO's at the summit told reporter Blessing Zulu of VOA's Studio 7 for
Zimbabwe that human rights abuses in Harare are escalating and the
Commission must intervene.

But Zimbabwe's Ambassador to the United
Nations Boniface Chidyausiku, told reporter Zulu that NGO's are
misrepresenting facts on the situation in Harare.

Secretary General
Tendai Biti of the Movement for Democratic Change faction led by founding
President Morgan Tsvangirai, refutes Harare's claims that it is a creation
of the West.

Zimbabwe prices doubled during April

Zimbabwe's cost of living doubled in a single month in April as annual
inflation surged to 3 713,9%, a further sign of economic turmoil in a
country where four in five people are jobless.

The
Central Statistical Office (CSO) said on Thursday prices jumped by 100,7%
last month after a 50,5% rise in March, when annual inflation had been 2
200,2%.

Raging inflation is the most visible sign of a deep
economic crisis which critics say has been worsened by President Robert
Mugabe's policies, such as his seizure of white-owned farms to redistribute
to black Zimbabweans.

An economic recession has seen
unemployment soar to around 80% and sparked shortages of foreign exchange,
food and fuel, leaving many Zimbabwean families unable to feed
themselves.

The CSO said prices of domestic power, food, fuel
and commuter transport fares had contributed to last month's
increase.

The central bank early this year projected the
inflation rate would come down to between 300% to 400% but analysts said
those projections would not be achieved. The International Monetary Fund had
seen inflation accelerating to 3 000% by the end of the
year.

Economic analysts see more price pressures from the
imports of the staple maize to plug a huge deficit this year. They say the
Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe could be forced to scrounge for foreign currency on
the black market, further weakening the country's already battered currency
and pushing up food prices.

Zimbabwe's foreign currency
crunch worsened after donors and investors shunned Mugabe's government over
its policies, such as the land seizures.

On Saturday, the
European Union and the United States -- which have imposed travel and
financial sanctions on Mugabe's government -- were critical of Zimbabwe's
election to chair the United Nations Commission on Sustainable
Development.

A US official said Harare was unsuitable to head
the agency because its agriculture, which used to be the breadbasket of the
Southern African region, was now on its knees.

Mugabe has
defended the land reforms as necessary to redress colonial land imbalances
that left 70% of the most fertile land in the hands of 4 500 white farmers,
and accuses Western powers of sabotaging the economy.

Lack of farming inputs Meanwhile, Zimbabwe farmers have only
planted 10% of the targeted winter wheat crop hectarage just two weeks
before the recommended planting deadline lapses, official media reported,
stoking fears of bread shortages.

The black farmers have
complained of lack of farming inputs such as fertilisers, chemicals, seed
and fuel, and some lack commercial farming skills.

A
parliamentary portfolio committee on agriculture was told that the target of
76 000 hectares -- which would have produced 400 000 tonnes of wheat --
would not be achieved due to shortages of fuel and
fertiliser.

Always Prepare Adequately for Winter Wheat

YET again, there has been inadequate
planning and preparation for the winter wheat crop, a development that could
translate into a huge deficit for the grain next year.

It is apparent
that we have learnt little from the experiences over the past six years,
where the country has been found wanting when it comes to planning and
preparation for winter wheat production.

This week, some of the key
people in wheat production portrayed a gloomy assessment of the winter wheat
prospects for this year.

Secretary for Agriculture Dr Shadreck Mlambo and
the District Development Fund director-general, Mr James Jonga, told the
Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Lands and Agriculture that the targeted
winter wheat hectarage will not be achieved.

Out of the projected 76
000 hectares, only 8 000 hectares have so far been put under
wheat.

The deadline for planting wheat is May 31. We are racing against
time.

This is a bleak outlook, which will necessitate an expensive grain
importation programme at a time when the country is grappling with a
shortage of foreign currency.

There is a litany of problems, which
include shortages of key inputs such as fertilizers, tillage and irrigation
facilities, all stemming from dismal planning and preparations.

We
believe the DDF director-general is being forthright by clearly stating that
we must not fool ourselves and give a sunny projection of the winter wheat
prospects when in actual fact there are no tractors to till the targeted
hectarage.

Another problem is that while the Government has over the past
years provided farmers with heavily subsidised inputs such as diesel and
fertilizers to stimulate production, these have sadly been the subject of
abuse by some farmers.

These unscrupulous farmers have diverted the
diesel and fertilizers meant for winter wheat to the parallel market for
selfish gains.

There should be a mechanism in place to plug all loopholes
and make sure that all the inputs are put to productive use.

Zesa
Holdings had played its part and guaranteed wheat farmers 20 hours a day of
uninterrupted power supply.

Electricity load-shedding has had a negative
impact on wheat production in the past years but with the dismal
preparations, the efforts of the power utility could be in vain.

We
take this opportunity to advise the authorities concerned not to rush and
talk about the hectarage to be cropped under wheat without getting a clear
picture of the available resources.

World duty-bound to oust the
despots

New Zealand Herald

Mirko Bagaric 5:00AM Friday May 18, 2007

If the Australian
Government really cared about the people of Zimbabwe it would desist from
futile grandstanding in the form of preventing its cricketers touring there.
Instead the Government would take decisive action by removing the murderous
Robert Mugabe regime from power.

History shows sporting boycotts only do
two things: punish sports fans and deny competitors the opportunity to
display their skill.

Prime Minister Howard has labelled Mugabe a "grubby
dictator" and accused him of using "Gestapo" tactics". Howard has correctly
noted that Mugabe has presided over the "systematic and brutal oppression of
civil society and political opposition".

The Mugabe regime has
summarily killed and beaten untold people and Zimbabwe now has the lowest
life expectancy rates in the world. On average women die at the age of 34
years - remarkably, this is down from 62 in 1980.

The futility of
Australia's opposition to Mugabe underlines much of what is wrong with
international affairs. In the end, talk of no tolerance towards despots is
just that.

The typical response to dictators who go about
summarily monstering their own people is feigned concern following an
isolated news report. Then the world gets busy doing nothing about it, apart
from the occasional sports ban.

Perhaps this is a bit too harsh. Mass
murders of civilians by their governments normally rate a mention at the
United Nations and it will often denounce such actions, sometimes even in
very serious tones, but in the end it will almost always "do"
nothing.

It's a hard job saving thousands of innocent people from cruel
deaths. It would require setting foot beyond six-star accommodation with top
notch debating facilities. Downright miserable that would be.

Thus,
the innocent folk who are born in countries ruled by tyrants keep "copping
it on the chin".

The number of people killed in internal conflict and
through wanton acts of dictatorial violence since World War II (170,000
million) exceeds the total number of people killed during both major
wars.

There are appalling examples of governments massacring their own
people. In 1994 the genocide in Rwanda resulted in 800,000 people being
murdered in 100 days; Pol Pot killed two million; and in the 1970s 300,000
people were murdered in Uganda while 1.5 million were killed in Ethiopia. It
is easy to multiply such examples.

In all cases, the rest of the
world knowingly stood idly by - although some of these events sparked
"furious" debates at the UN.

Time for a perspective check. The
devastation occurring in Zimbabwe should be used to put in place a clear
framework regarding the obligation of the international community to prevent
the killing and starvation of citizens by their own governments.

As
international law stands, the main obstacle to getting rid of tyrants who
kill thousands of their own citizens is state sovereignty. However, this
concept is overrated. Invisible lines on the earth's surface have no moral
standing and can't trump moral standards which are of universal
application.

In reality, the main disinclination to stop preventable mass
killings of strangers in other parts of the world is that they are strangers
and are in other parts of our world. It is true that the world (or parts of
it) has, on rare occasions, stepped up and drawn a line in the sand and said
no to despots, stopping them from more mass killings.

Successful
interventions include Vietnam's invasion of Cambodia in 1979; Tanzania's
intervention to remove Idi Amin from Uganda in the same year and Nato's
invasion of Yugoslavia in 1999. The success of these interventions and the
absence of criticism of such action demonstrate that state sovereignty is no
barrier to humanitarian interventions. In fact it shows respect for state
sovereignty is an excuse, rather than a reason for the inaction of the
world.

At present, humanitarian intervention is opportunistic and
expedient in nature.

It is time for a fundamental global re-think to
this approach. Humanitarian intervention should be transformed into a duty
upon the world's nations. Human life, especially when there are thousands at
stake, is too important to leave to chance. If this problem is not expressly
addressed now, legal and social commentators are likely to be addressing the
same issue into the 22nd Century.

We should not wait until then. It
is only reasonable to believe that waiting will result in future generations
seeking solutions while lamenting the killing of another 170 million or more
people by their own governments.

Surely, one century with 170 million
preventable deaths is sufficient reason to seriously consider fundamental
reform of the global approach to government-sponsored killings of their own
people.

So when is humanitarian intervention appropriate?

This is
not difficult. Humanitarian intervention should be mandatory in cases of
large-scale government-sanctioned killings. The Security Council should be
given the authority and responsibility to muster Coalitions of the Willing,
perhaps selected by ballot, to supply the necessary resources.

If it
fails in its role, citizens from countries ruled by despots should be
conferred automatic citizenship rights to Security Council member nations -
nothing like self interest to stimulate action.

There's a job already
waiting for the Security Council in Zimbabwe. Rather than wasting time on
futile cricket bans, Australia needs to act on its supposed newfound concern
for the people of Zimbabwe and petition the Security Council to authorise an
international force to remove Mugabe.

This is something that would uplift
cricket and non-cricket fans alike.

* Dr Mirko Bagaric is a lawyer and
author of Critical Perspectives of International Law and Human Rights (to be
published by University Press of America in late 2007).

Arrested Zimbabwe Civic Group Members Still Detained But Not
Charged

VOA

By Jonga Kandemiiri Washington 17 May
2007

Five members of Zimbabwe's National Constitutional
Assembly, are still under in police custody, following their arrest
Wednesday in Harare, while peacefully demonstrating against the proposed
18th amendment to the constitution and demanding a new
constitution.

Police had reportedly arrested 10 people at the protest,
that attracted around 100-people around African Union Square in Harare, NCA
officials said.

In March, NCA chairman Lovemore Madhuku fractured his
arm, when, together with top civic and opposition officials, including
founding Movement for Democratic Change president Morgan Tsvangirai, he was
badly beaten by police while attending a prayer meeting called by the Save
Zimbabwe Campaign.

National director Ernest Mudzengi of the NCA, told
reporter Jonga Kandemiiri of VOA's Studio 7 for Zimbabwe that the five being
held at Harare Central Police Station, had not been charged, but had been
badly beaten.

Mudzengi said one of the members who sustained serious
injury from the beatings, was admitted to a hospital, but under police
custody.

Zimbabwe: Inside Mugabe's Land of Fear

Reporter Evan Williams and Director Siobhan Sinnerton reveal
startling claims that the Mugabe Government is using the supply of AIDS
drugs and food aid to gerrymander upcoming elections.

As Zimbabwe
spirals ever deeper into repression and starvation, an Unreported World team
just back from three weeks travelling undercover through the country reveals
startling claims that the Mugabe Government is using the supply of AIDS
drugs and food aid to gerrymander upcoming elections.

Reporter Evan
Williams and Director Siobhan Sinnerton travel as tourists to avoid the
scrutiny of Mugabe's pervasive intelligence service. They meet members of
the political opposition, women who have been imprisoned and tortured,
families desperate for food and struggling with 2000 percent inflation, and
the tragic households headed by children orphaned by the AIDS
pandemic.

Williams and Sinnerton arrive just as the government
intelligence service launches a new campaign of repression, abducting and
beating scores of opposition members across the country.

Arriving at
the country's second largest city, Bulawayo, the team talk to church leaders
and members of a new underground movement. The picture they are given is
bleak: on top of the repression, a lack of food, jobs and medical services
is causing massive hardship. Williams and Sinnerton interview women
activists who say they were jailed for days with their babies and subjected
to humiliating abuse.

One opposition MDC Party MP claims that you're more
likely to get access to government food and AIDS drugs if you are a
supporter, or member of, the ruling Zanu-PF Party. She says if you are not a
Zanu-PF supporter you will have more trouble obtaining these life-saving
services. She claims this also includes the delivery of food from
international aid organisations.

Avoiding detection by Mugabe's
ubiquitous secret police and intelligence services, the team are taken into
rural villages rarely seen by the outside world. They find that severe
shortages of food and medicine is particularly hitting the orphans left
behind by the ravages of AIDS. One priest tells Williams that there are tens
of thousands of orphans in the countryside struggling to survive. He's
trying to set up an orphanage for some of them but can't afford food or
clothes.

Their team's final leg is a tense journey through the capital
Harare. Here, a human rights lawyer tells Unreported World that the police
are now systematically torturing suspected opposition members and preventing
legal representation for those taken in.

It's not just suspected
opposition activists who are being targeted. One journalist describes
suffering four days of brutal torture at the hands of senior police
officers. His 'crime' was trying to report for an opposition newspaper and
he was warned he would be killed if he continued working. He was arrested at
the same time as a TV journalist who was abducted and killed for allegedly
sending TV pictures of the police beating of opposition leaders out to
foreign broadcasters.

In Harare's sprawling townships Williams and
Sinnerton find plenty of brave but tragic child-headed house-holds
struggling just to find food every day, following the death of both parents
from AIDS.

As the team leaves the country, it's clear that in what was
once one of Africa's wealthiest, best educated countries entire generations
are being "dumped to die" by a callous, corrupt government.

Nigeria, or the idiots guide to stealing an election

African Path

May 17,
2007 09:10 AMWritten by Gavin Chait

In 1492 Rodrigo Borgia, a
Spanish cardinal, is said to have bribed all his rivals the equivalent of
millions of dollars in order to become Alexander VI, the 215th Catholic
Pope. In comparison to Nigerian elections, he got in cheap.

Alhaji
Umaru Yar'Adua is rumoured to have spent more than US$ 100 million securing
his election as president. Most Nigerians had an inkling he would win as he
never bothered campaigning.

"His victory was like Maradona's Hand of God
goal that allowed Argentina to win their 1986 quarter-final World Cup match
against England. When Yar'Adua won he said, 'Don't blame me for winning, I
didn't declare myself president.' Maradona cheated, but the referee was the
one who allowed it."

Father Matthew Kukah is an engaging speaker. He has
been a member of Nigeria's Truth and Reconciliation Commission, was part of
the commission that investigated their electoral system, and is the
vicar-general of the Catholic Diocese of Nigeria. And he is in Cape Town to
give his impressions of the recent election.

"It has massively
expanded the vocabulary of Nigerians," he laughs. "Everyone is learning new
words: the election was a 'charade', it was 'fraudulent'. Everyone has
bought into the belief that these were the worst elections in Nigerian
history. Which is why it is interesting that (South African) President Thabo
Mbeki was the first to declare the elections free and fair and to
congratulate Yar'Adua on his success. I don't know what he sees that we
don't. Comparisons with Zimbabwe will not be mentioned," he laughs
again.

Kukah was alluding to Zimbabwe's dictator, Robert Mugabe, who,
after stealing the last pretence at elections in his country in 2003,
received South African observers and ministers who also declared him freely
elected. South Africa has abandoned any interest in promoting democracy in
Africa over creating the delusion of African unity.

And everyone
wants to know, "What does this mean?"

At the end of 1998, for reasons it
will take too long to explain, I was walking through the muddy, slushy and
muggy central part of Mozambique attempting to get back to South Africa. I
had fallen in with a group of Nigerians travelling without passports and
also making the long trip south. Sunny, one of the chaps, was about seven
foot tall and had a voice that made James Earl Jones sound like a whiny
school-girl.

General Sani Abacha had recently died of what was being
called a heart attack. The Nigerians laughed cheerfully at this. "No," said
Sunny, "he had made the other generals angry, so they put poison in his
Burantashi (a native Hausa-Fulani virility drug) when he was with some
prostitutes." Then they continued in even more surprising fashion. "It's
like Saro-wiwa, he also upset the wrong people."

Ken Saro-wiwa was a
famous Nigerian novelist from the Rivers Province in Southern Nigeria. The
province houses the Niger Delta and is the site of Nigeria's oil wealth.
They are one of the largest producers in the world yet more than half of
Nigerians live in absolute poverty, below the UN's measure of US$1 per day.
Saro-wiwa created the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP)
in support of the Ogoni's demand for Shell, which has the concession for oil
extraction in the delta, to distribute the wealth more fairly and to clean
up their astonishingly messy operations there.

He, along with 12 others,
was arrested and executed. Most, including myself, had always believed he
had been killed because of his confrontation with Abacha.

The
Nigerians considered this naïve. Hadn't Saro-wiwa been a mainstay of the
institution until then, hadn't he been a popular television producer and
local star? No, he would never have achieved such success without the
support of the right people. He was stealing from them. They punished
him.

I repeat this not to promote different versions of history but to
indicate that, whatever else I may have learned about Nigerians, the most
important is their love of drama, intrigue and conspiracy. Nigeria's version
of Hollywood, Nollywood, is the third largest producer of films in the
world. Most of them are predictable stories along the theme of conspiracy,
murder, drama, intrigue, happy ending.

So Father Kukah's presentation
is like a Nollywood movie.

My notes are a mess, but I've extracted what I
can.

Nigeria is comprised of 36 states, 764 local councils, over 400
ethnic groups and is largely divided between Muslim north, and Catholic
south. 140 million people live in this chaotic nation. And they have exactly
one important industry. Oil.

It is owned by the government. Whoever
owns the government owns the oil. And pockets all the money. Spending a few
hundred million to secure that largess is nothing.

"And you don't
start campaigning right away. Whoever wins an election will get to serve
both terms allowed under the constitution. No-one loses a second-term
election," says Kukah. "This allows candidates to spend a long time
planning."

When Abacha went the "right" people decided to bring Olusegun
Obasanjo out of retirement to be president. Obasanjo had previously been a
military dictator of Nigeria but handed over to the civilian government
kicked out by Sani Abacha. The "right" people felt that Obasanjo would be
easily pliable and easy to push out at the end of one term.

Obasanjo
had different ideas. He filled the cabinet and all the provinces with
supporters and went on to hold the country for a second term. Approaching
the end of that term he called on Kukah to be secretary of a commission to
investigate the Nigerian electoral code. Hundreds of lawyers spent months
creating a massive document to ease fraud at the ballot and reduce
confusion.

"But this was all a ruse," says Kukah. "He wasn't interested
in reforming the election process. Abacha wanted to stand for a third term
and change the constitution." But here everything fell apart. Nigeria's
parliament rejected that proposal and, for good measure, all the hard
negotiated plans for electoral reform.

"The election was not stolen
on election day," says Kukah. "Box stuffing, intimidation, violence, voter
roll fraud, killings ... these are all symptoms. The election was stolen
right from the beginning."

Obasanjo started looking for a way to maintain
power while not in government. His party, the People's Democratic Party
(PDP), called for applications. It cost US$ 35 000 merely to be considered
to receive an application form to request permission to apply to become a
candidate for the PDP. To win the right to contest the elections cost a
fortune. It became a bit like venture capital. Shadowy figures would put up
the money on condition that certain things be agreed in advance.

At
the same time Obasanjo began the second phase of his machinations. The
government appointed Financial and Economic Crimes Commission declared that
they would publish a list of public figures guilty of corruption. Many of
the most attractive candidates found themselves listed. This went to
court.

"Court after court declared that the commission did not have the
right to simply publish names. Investigations must be conducted by the
courts, not appointed commissions. But it was done. The burden of proof was
not necessary and many candidates were simply excluded."

Then the
last phase. "Poll after poll, organised by the PDP, declared that General
Mohammadu Buhari and Umari Yar'Adua were neck and neck. By April 14
Nigerians were already traumatised and confused," says Kukah.

Yet one
of the most popular candidates, Vice-president Atiku Abubakar, was entirely
neglected. Now he and Buhari are seeking to contest the election through the
various electoral tribunals.

"How can you contest in the tribunals if the
tribunals all belong to the government?" asks Kukah. "The tribunals tell us
that Yar'Adua is good, but in what way? I've travelled in the state where he
is senator, and it is no different than anywhere else in
Nigeria."

So, now what? Can anything beneficial come out of this
election?

"Notice that the three candidates were all Muslims. I think
that it is very encouraging that so many Catholics were prepared to help
Muslims steal the presidency. It indicates that we are crossing our cultural
divides," says Kukah, possibly seriously.

"The legitimacy of the
elections won't come from the ballot; it will come from the actions. In one
state the people went to the courts to have a senator who they accused of
stealing an election removed. After three years the courts agreed, but then
the people didn't want him to go, because he'd done a good job. The real
test will be whether there is electricity for more than four hours a day,
whether there is sanitation, or running water. If Yar'Adua delivers this,
then he will be a good president."

Professor Laurence Schlemmer, a South
African analyst of African politics, once said, "Africans are very sceptical
of politics and politicians. They know that all politicians lie. So they are
pragmatic and vote for the ones who tell the best lies. It is only in more
developed countries that you react in shock when politicians sometimes don't
do exactly what they promised."

Nigeria is a populous nation filled
with creative and ambitious people. The only reason it remains poor is
because of corrupt and venal politicians. With that much money up for grabs
it is no wonder that fraud abounds. Whoever won the elections would have
bribed their way into that position.

At which point, during question
time, the agitated young man sitting to my left leapt to his feet and ranted
on, "MOSOP and Shell in Ogoni Land ... you are helping Shell ... Ogoni
people power ... something in 1965 ... again in 79 ..." oh, hell, I give
up.

I turned around. Suddenly the whole room was waving placards. Kukah
looked worried. Perhaps the man has spent too long wondering in the
corridors of power and some of the mud has splattered. Perhaps. But Nigeria
is a chaotic soap-opera and everyone is related in some way to each other.
The invective being shouted back and forth showed the incredible
interconnectedness of the power-struggle.

Until one person's success
does not entirely infuriate another, leading to violence and repression,
Africa will not stabilise and grow.